European Telecommunications Standards Institute—European Standard ETSI EN 300 744 describes a broadcasting system for terrestrial distribution based on Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing COFDM (a digital multi-carrier modulation scheme that uses a large number of closely-spaced orthogonal subcarriers) and MPEG2 (encoding and transport data system, for example, as defined by ISO/IEC 13818-1.MPEG) technologies. Application of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute—Technical Specification ETSI ETS 101 191 extend the user of this system to Single Frequency Networks (SFN), for example, as defined by ETS 101 191 and in Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) A110.
The extension to SFN is accomplished by periodically adding one packet including synchronization time stamps and modulation parameters information to the transport stream (e.g., as defined by ISO 138181-1) of all transmitters broadcasting in a SFN area. The packet that is added to the transport stream is a Mega-frame Initialization Packet (MIP). The MIP is an MPEG2 transport stream compliant packet that carries mega-frame and modulation parameters, for example, as defined by ETS 101 191.